Pleading Guilty
by Signy1
Summary: The Maritime Board may have cleared the Skipper of blame for the shipwreck, but that doesn't mean that there still aren't questions to be answered. And there is a vast difference between blame and responsibility; they don't always go in tandem. Who is really to blame for their plight? And what does it really mean to 'take responsibility?


Set immediately after the events of 'Court Martial.' Brief mention is made of events found in 'The Sound of Quacking.'

OoOoOoO

"Gee, Professor," Gilligan said, carefully unlashing the uprights of the now-superfluous shelter. They always needed materials to build something or other, and the bamboo poles were still perfectly good. It would be a pity to waste them. "I sure am glad that you heard that report on the radio. I don't know _how_ long it might have taken me to get the Skipper to come back home otherwise. It could have been days. Maybe even weeks!"

The Professor blinked. "Get him to… come back home?"

"Yeah. I'd already got him to drop the idea of killing himself, and not a minute too soon, either. I mean, once he was busy telling me all the reasons why _I_ shouldn't hang myself, he wasn't going to either, right? Boy, I must have been sitting there for an hour, waiting for him to show up."

"You mean… you staged that? What would you have done if he hadn't stopped you?"

"I dunno. I guess I would have gone aagghhhkkkgghh." He crossed his eyes and let his tongue protrude for a moment, then laughed. "No, Professor, that was actually the one part I _wasn't_ worried about. I knew he wouldn't let me do it. And he didn't. He said that we both needed to face up to our mistakes instead of running away from them. No cliffs, no ropes, no anything. And he said that if anyone ever strangled me to death, it was going to be _him,_ and not to forget it. So that wasn't a problem anymore."

The Professor raised his eyebrows. The relationship between the two sailors still fascinated him.

"After that, he decided that we needed to come over here to live on the other side of the island all alone, instead. So then it was just going

to be a matter of waiting, and sort of dropping a few hints, until he realized that we needed to go back and help you guys with the chores, and that staying over here on this side was really punishing you more than us. And how was that fair, right?"

The Professor nodded, because he didn't quite trust himself to speak.

"You said it yourself. Skipper and me, we do most of the heavy stuff around here. I mean, take firewood. Can you imagine Mr. and Mrs. Howell doing that? Ha! I sure can't. 'My boy, the only time a Howell gives the chop is when he's firing people! The nerve!'" he mimicked. "And you, Professor—it's much more important for you to keep on doing all your science junk and inventing stuff. You can't waste your time on firewood detail. And it wouldn't be right to expect Ginger or Mary Ann to do it; those logs get real heavy. And so do the water buckets. And the coconuts." He grinned at the Professor. "See?"

The Professor saw, all right. He saw that the younger man's thought processes were a psychologist's doctoral dissertation waiting to happen. "That's quite shrewd, Gilligan. I'm impressed."

"Aw, it's nothing. It's just that Skipper's a _skipper_ , you know? He takes care of people. You're his passengers, so you're his responsibility, and he'd never want to do anything that might make things harder for you. And if you guys suddenly had to catch all your own fish, and gather all your own fruit and firewood and water and everything, and fix the huts when they leak, and dig out the latrines when they stink, and all the other stuff, without us to help, that's sure making things harder."

The Professor nodded again, uncomfortably aware that he wasn't entirely sure what 'all the other stuff' actually entailed. "Well, we're all glad you're coming back, and it's not because of the extra work. None of us blame either of you for the shipwreck, you know. In a storm like that one, there's no guarantee that the anchor would have held even if it _had_ been attached."

"Oh, it wouldn't have," Gilligan said casually, piling some of the now-disassembled bamboo framework into a neat stack. He started to dismantle another section of roof. "It didn't do any good."

"You sound very certain of that," the Professor said.

Gilligan dropped the palm fronds and clapped a hand to his mouth, his eyes widening in the familiar guilty panic. He looked around in all directions, apparently looking for eavesdroppers, found none. Biting his lip, he seemed to come to a decision. "If I tell you something important, will you promise never to tell the others?"

The Professor frowned. That sounded vaguely ominous, but he nodded wary assent. How bad could it be? And even if it was, better by far to have all available facts to hand. "All right. What is it?"

"Really? Super-duper double-pinky-swear you won't tell?" Gilligan held out both hands, pinkies extended.

Suppressing a sigh at the juvenile ritual, he touched his own pinky fingers to Gilligan's. "I promise, Gilligan. I won't say a word."

"Okay," Gilligan said, and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. "It's the anchor. It _was_ attached. It's just that the line broke under the strain of trying to hold the Minnow in place. Right before the rudder snapped and we totally lost control. That really was one heck of a storm."

Whatever the Professor had been expecting to hear—and he didn't know himself what that might have been—it wasn't that. "The rope—you didn't— _what?!_?"

"Remember, you promised," Gilligan said. "It's a secret, so don't tell anyone, and especially don't tell Skipper."

"But Gilligan," the Professor said, snatching at a single question from the dozens spinning through his head. "If you knew the rope broke, why did you say that you forgot to attach it? Why pretend that it was your fault?"

Gilligan shrugged. "Well, I didn't want Skipper to think that it was _his_ fault anymore. And I knew you'd all believe that I'm dumb enough to do something like that, so it was the simplest way."

"But Gilligan," the Professor repeated, still stunned. "If the rope broke in the storm, it wasn't anyone's fault. Why take the blame for an act of God?"

He shrugged again. "People don't like it when there aren't reasons for things," he said simply. "Just saying that the shipwreck happened because of bad luck… that's not really a reason, is it? It doesn't explain why that storm came out of a clear blue sky, or why it happened just right when we were out there, or why it happened to us instead of someone else. We could say that bad things happen because sometimes bad things just _do_ happen… or we could say that I screwed everything up and that's why we're all stuck here and so it's all my fault. Not theirs. And so there's a nice easy reason for everything. What do you think everyone would rather believe?"

Never mind the dissertation. This was a book. At the very least. The Professor was forcibly reminded that, while there was no doubt that Gilligan was often childlike, that was not the same thing as childish. And that simple was not necessarily the same thing as stupid. "That's really very noble of you."

"Nah, just trying to make everything easier on all of us," he said matter-of-factly. "I already goof up stuff all the time. I'm used to it. And I was real worried about Skipper. I'd have done anything to help him feel better."

"So you weren't afraid to take the blame for the original accident? You weren't worried that we'd leave you here alone?"

"You guys always forgive me after a while. And I knew you wouldn't leave me here. Think about it. Fruit, fish, firewood, coconuts, water, latrines, leaky huts—"

"Did you consider whether it would damage your friendship with the Skipper if he held you responsible for the loss of his vessel and our subsequent shipwreck?"

A shadow crossed Gilligan's eyes, and he swallowed hard. That possibility obviously scared him far more than did the prospect of mere death, but he brazened it out. "Well, yeah, but I had to take the chance. You saw how he was; I had to snap him out of it somehow. Besides, even if he did hate me for wrecking the Minnow, even if he never wanted to see me again, he couldn't fire me until after we're rescued, anyway." He managed a sickly half-grin. "You know. Fruit, fish…"

"…Firewood and coconuts. Point taken," he said, and shook his head. The Skipper, he thought, was not the only one on the island with a strong caretaker's instinct. "But that's another troubling aspect. What about after we're rescued? The Maritime Board would hardly consider your activities here as in any way exculpatory for the initial mishap."

Gilligan gave him a sidelong glance. "Professor, if I had to, I'd stand before the Maritime Board and swear that I'd taken a sledgehammer and bashed in her hull before we left the dock. They could exculp me from here to next Tuesday, and so what? Who cares? They weren't going to take away Skipper's captain's papers, not on my watch, not when we all know the shipwreck wasn't his fault. So…" He smiled a bit, and shrugged, and didn't bother finishing the sentence.

"So you throw yourself on your sword to prevent any such fate. Damon and Pythias in a battered white cap," the Professor murmured to himself.

"Sword? What sword? Are you feeling all right, Professor? Have you been out in the sun too long?" Gilligan said, sounding a bit worried. "And who are Danish and Python?"

"It's not important," the Professor said, not feeling up to explanations. Describing the Platonian ideals of friendship could wait for another day, assuming he was ever able to think of the story again without mangling the names into 'Danish and Python.' Platonian ideals indeed. Gilligan's little ruse demonstrated a level of friendship, of loyalty, that the Professor had never before witnessed, certainly never experienced, and more than suspected he was not capable of duplicating. He felt a sudden flash of raw envy for the Skipper. "You know, Gilligan, the world would be a better place if there were more people like you in it."

Gilligan laughed. "That's funny, Professor. Most people say that _one_ of me is too many!"

"Don't ever believe that," the Professor said, and cleared his throat. "Well. At any rate, the important thing is that you and the Skipper are both coming back. And you must know that the chores have absolutely nothing to do with it. Whatever our initial differences, the seven of us have melded into a harmonic group, with complementary abilities and a strong communal bond, of which you're an integral part."

"And you've all gotten to be the best friends a guy could ever have, too," Gilligan said. "I'm sure glad I got shipwrecked with all of you."

"I'm not certain I can entirely concur, but I do appreciate the sentiment. Come on," the Professor said, and summoned a smile. "Let's get back to the others."

"Sure thing, Professor," Gilligan agreed, bouncing to his feet, the makeshift hut now entirely reduced to a neat bundle of bamboo poles. He slung the bundle over his shoulder, then bent down again to pick up his kerchief-wrapped possessions. The action threw him off balance, which, predictably, led to dropping everything and tripping himself. Twice. The third time was the charm; the Professor forestalled any difficulties by taking the small bundle himself, while Gilligan picked himself up with a rueful glance and as much dignity as possible, shouldered the bamboo, and set off through the jungle towards their campsite, the Professor slowly trailing in his wake. All traces of the manipulative chessmaster, the armchair psychologist, the willing martyr had vanished, and the Professor, still in something of a daze, couldn't help but wonder if he'd dreamed the previous fifteen minutes.

A memory struck him; early in their enforced stay on the island, their usual food sources blighted, Gilligan had suggested taste-testing an abundant, but unfamiliar plant. He, the Professor, had told him that it could well be poisonous, and that it was too dangerous for any of them to risk eating it. "Even _me_?" the man had said in utter disbelief.

At the time, hungry and afraid, he had let the comment pass without paying it much attention. In retrospect, however… troubling was no word for it.

When had they all decided that the hapless young sailor would be the whipping boy whenever anything went wrong? Literally as well as figuratively, and it wasn't even always the Skipper. When had he decided that he didn't mind, that scapegoat was the role he was best suited to play? And how—dear God, _how_ —had he come to consider them friends in spite of it?

" _GILLIGAN!_ " The familiar bellow split the air as they drew nearer to camp.

Gilligan twitched, eyes wide and panicky again, and he spun to face the Professor, narrowly missing him with the bamboo in the process. "Uh-oh. Sorry, Professor," he said. "I gotta go."

" ** _GILLIGAN!_** "

"Oh, boy," he muttered. He dropped his burden, clapped a hand to his head to keep his hat in place, and ran. The Professor picked up the poles, and followed at a more leisurely pace, thinking hard.

When he returned to camp, however, he couldn't help but notice that the trough in which they kept their drinking water was all but empty. Fish. Fruit. Firewood…

He knew that it wouldn't be empty for long.


End file.
